Quote

I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

Matthew Arnold

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Matthew Arnold
Age: 65 †
Born: 1822
Born: December 24
Died: 1888
Died: April 15
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
School Inspector
University Teacher
Writer
Laleham
Surrey
Criticism
Known
Propagate
Learn
Disinterested
Thought
Endeavour
Best
Definition
World
Bound
Definitions
Bounds

More quotes by Matthew Arnold

Image
God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!--Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!--what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
Matthew Arnold
Image
For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Style ... is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.
Matthew Arnold
Image
What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.
Matthew Arnold
Image
For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.
Matthew Arnold
Image
For poetry the idea is everything the rest is a world of illusion.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Six years-six little years-six drops of time.
Matthew Arnold
Image
How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!
Matthew Arnold
Image
Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
Matthew Arnold
Image
Culture is properly described as the love of perfection it is a study of perfection.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Nature's great law, and the law of all men's minds? To its own impulse every creature stirs: Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
Matthew Arnold
Image
The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.
Matthew Arnold
Image
No, no! The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing--only he His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Truth illuminates and gives joy and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held.
Matthew Arnold
Image
Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses. In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair.
Matthew Arnold